Spike pattern recognition by supervised classification in low dimensional embedding space

© The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Epileptiform discharges in interictal electroencephalography (EEG) form the mainstay of epilepsy diagnosis and localization of seizure onset. Visual analysis is rater-dependent and time consuming, especially for long-term recordings, while computerized methods can provide efficiency in reviewing long EEG recordings. This paper presents a machine learning approach for automated detection of epileptiform discharges (spikes). The proposed method first detects spike patterns by calculating similarity to a coarse shape model of a spike waveform and then refines the results by identifying subtle differences between actual spikes and false detections. Pattern classification is performed using support vector machines in a low dimensional space on which the original waveforms are embedded by locality preserving projections. The automatic detection results are compared to experts’ manual annotations (101 spikes) on a whole-night sleep EEG recording. The high sensitivity (97 %) and the low false positive rate (0.1 min−1), calculated by intra-patient cross-validation, highlight the potential of the method for automated interictal EEG assessment.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The selenium jevels of mothers and their neonates using hair, breast milk, meconium, and maternal and umbilical cord blood in van basin

The objective of the present study is to calculate linear regressions between a mother and her child with respect to their selenium concentration (ng/g) in the following traits: maternal blood and umbilical cord blood, maternal and child hair, maternal milk and child umbilical cord blood, maternal milk and meconium, maternal blood plasma, and child meconium. The data were collected at Research Hospital of the University of Yüzüncü Yıl from 30 pairs of mothers and their newborn baby. The mean maternal serum Se level in 30 mothers was 68.52 ± 3.57 ng/g and cord plasma level was 119.90 ± 18.08 ng/g. The Se concentration in maternal and neonatal hair was 330.84 ± 39.03 and 1,124.76 ± 186.84 ng/g, respectively. The Se concentration of maternal milk at day 14 after delivery was determined as 68.63 ± 7.78 ng/g (n = 13) and the concentration of Se was 418.90 ± 45.49 ng/g (n = 22) for meconium of neonatal. There was no significant difference between maternal blood and milk Se levels. However, hair Se concentration was significantly higher than milk and maternal blood Se level. For each trait comparison, the average absolute difference in log10-transformed Se concentration was calculated between a mother and her child. The observed average absolute difference was compared with a test distribution of 1,000 resampled bootstrap averages where the number of samples was maintained but the relationship between a mother and her child was randomized among samples (α = 0.05).H. Sağmanlıgil Özdemir, F. Karadas, A. C. Pappas, P. Cassey, G. Oto and O. Tunce

Survival and Mortality of Pumas (Puma concolor) in a Fragmented, Urbanizing Landscape

Wide-ranging large carnivores pose myriad challenges for conservation, especially in highly fragmented landscapes. Over a 13-year period, we combined monitoring of radio collared pumas (Puma concolor) with complementary multi-generational genetic analyses to inform puma conservation in southern California, USA. Our goals were to generate survivorship estimates, determine causes of mortality, identify barriers to movement, and determine the genetic and demographic challenges to puma persistence among >20,000,000 people and extensive urban, suburban, and exurban development. Despite protection from hunting, annual survival for radio collared pumas was surprisingly low (55.8%), and humans caused the majority of puma deaths. The most common sources of mortality were vehicle collisions (28% of deaths), and mortalities resulting from depredation permits issued after pumas killed domestic animals (17% of deaths). Other human-caused mortalities included illegal shootings, public safety removals, and human-caused wildfire. An interstate highway (I-15) bisecting this study area, and associated development, have created a nearly impermeable barrier to puma movements, resulting in severe genetic restriction and demographic isolation of the small puma population (n ~ 17-27 adults) in the Santa Ana Mountains west of I-15. Highways that bisect habitat or divide remaining "conserved" habitat, and associated ongoing development, threaten to further subdivide this already fragmented puma population and increase threats to survival. This study highlights the importance of combining demographic and genetic analyses, and illustrates that in the absence of effective measures to reduce mortality and enhance safe movement across highways, translocation of pumas, such as was done with the endangered Florida panther (P. c. coryi), may ultimately be necessary to prevent further genetic decline and ensure persistence of the Santa Ana Mountains population